Geocaching Cookies

Christmas is over, I know.
Still, it doesn't have to be Christmas to prepare a treat for your geocaching friends!
I made them for our "mulled wine event" held at Rostock's Christmas Market on December 12.

Actually, you can use your favorite cookie receipe; any receipe that is good for cutting cookies. So the cookie dough is the easy part ;)

When you're ready, roll out the dough with a rolling pin (or a glass bottle, if you don't have a rolling pin. I don't have one and an empty wine bottle works just as well!).

I came up with 3 different shapes for my geocaching cookies: A "micro cache" film canister, a GPS device, and the geocaching.com logo.

For the micro cache and the GPS device I cut their shapes from cardboard and used a knife to cut the dough into shape.

While starting to cut the micro cache cookies, I found there's an easier way: Use a (juice / water / wine) glass to cut circles, then use a knife to cut the circle into 3 parts, the middle one being the micro cache cookie.

The little GPS devices are hand-cut, sorry. But it's not too much work, really.

What's really easy, is cutting squares for the geocaching.com logos. Just cut the size you want them to be.

Here they are - ready to go into the oven! See the little witches on the right?

Unfortunately their brooms broke off and they didn't look too nice with their chocolate cover, but they were quite tasty anyway ;)

When you're done, bake your cookies according to receipe and let them cool off.


Next comes the fun part: decoration!

I dipped the little GPS antennas into melted chocolate and let them dry before continuing with the names on them. I also dipped the micro cache cookies into the chocolate to make it look like the lid. And guess what: the micro cache cookies are done!

I used Schwartau Zuckerschrift to write the names of the geocachers onto the little GPS cookies according to their "will attend" logs in the cache listing.

I decided to make one cookie per team plus a few "Cacher" cookies for those who would attend without "will attend" log.

For the geocaching logos I used Back- und Speisefarben to dye the frosting. I only made one color frosting at a time starting with yellow (so I could reuse the rest for the red rosting). It was fairly easy to put the frosting on the cookies using a simple teaspoon. Just make sure it is not too runny - use more powdered sugar if it is. After the yellow frosting I made the red one as the fields are opposite each other on the logo and I didn't have to worry about the frostings running into each other. While I let them dry I continued with writing names to my little GPS cookies. Blue and green were easy to do, too. When everything was dry I used the rest of the chocolate to make the circles symbolizing the details on the logo.

The cookies were a big success at our geocaching event. People marveled at the effort and were delighted with finding their names on the GPS cookies. Plus they were a nice treat to enjoy along with the mulled wine :)

(c) TeddyOnTour

What do you think? Wanna give it a try?

Candy Flower Bouquet

Ever wondered what to give someone who already has everything or who doesn't want anything?
I was invited to a wedding in Singapore and the couple didn't want anything as their biggest gift from their friends for them was us coming to Singapore for their special day.
Still I didn't want to come empty-handed, so I came up with the idea of a candy flower bouquet. And here is how I made it:


I bought all kinds of chocolates and candys (about 60 items, all separately wrapped and 2 of each type for the happy couple) and tied sewing thread around one end of their wrapping (about 30 cm per candy using a Cow Hitch knot).


The next step was to arrange 4-6 chocolates into a small bunch and tie them together. I used small pieces of wire which were quite easy to handle, but more thread can be used, too.


Lots of tying...

... and trying not to eat the chocolates myself ;)


Assembling all those small bunches into one large bouquet would have turned them into a big messy bulk, so I cut out a circle from cardboard (the back of a writing pad or any cardboard box that is at hand) and covered it with a green napkin (green paper works as well).


I attached all the small candy bunches to my cardboard circle, leaving a few centimeters between them so there is enough space for all the lovely candy. A large sewing needle works really well here, as one can easily poke holes into the cardboard to pull all the threads that were tied around the candy wrapping in step 1 through the cardboard. I tied several knots to each 2 strands of thread: to the opposite ones, to the neighboring ones etc, to attach the candy really well to the cardboard circle (Don't look at the small holes in the photo! Those were my first attempt to attach them one by one...).
Once all the candy is attached to the cardboard circle, we're almost done!

I used a cheap (green) plastic ice cream cup with a foot (shaped like a champagne glass, but more sturdy, of course) as my bouquet base and put a few cardboard squares on top (not too large so they are not visible).


The finishing touches are Tortenspitze to give it a Biedermeier look and a few fake ivory leaves (a bargain from the swedish furniture store that has been sitting among my diy stuff for a while).
The chocolate hearts are stuck to the bottom of candy like the green one in photo 2 using double-sided tape.
Doesn't look too bad, he?

Now that I am done writing this, I found this website with the same type of candy flower bouquets. They also look nice with one wrapping colour only.

Liked the idea? Create your own candy flower bouquet! It's easy! And maybe share a photo of it?!